U.S. envoy urges pullout coordination
Outgoing World bank president "lays cards on the table," pushes for Israeli-Palestinian economic coordination on Gaza pullout plan and says teams from World Bank group due next week to examine possible projects to rebuild Gaza's impoverished economy after the withdrawal this summer
TEL AVIV - World Bank representatives will visit Israel next week to try to help Israel and the Palestinian Authority in coordinating the upcoming pullout from Gaza.
The visitors are also expected to draw up plans for projects to boost the impoverished coastal strip’s economy after the withdrawal, Yedioth Ahronoth quoted U.S. envoy James Wolfensohn as saying on Wednesday.
Speaking after meeting Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, Wolfensohn, the outgoing World Bank president who was made international "special envoy" to help coordinate economic and political aspects of the withdrawal, said Israel and the Palestinians must build trust between them if such cooperation could take place.
“I will lay the cards openly on the table,” the Israeli newspaper quoted him as saying. “The Palestinians don’t believe a word you say. They are convinced that the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is the end of the process.”
Wolfensohn was sent by the Quartet, a group of mediators of Middle East peace that includes the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia, to help Israel coordinate its evacuation of all 21 Jewish settlements in Gaza and four of 120.
He said teams from the World Bank group, which helps to improve developing countries, would work to improve checkpoints in Gaza to allow smoother passage for the thousands of Palestinian laborers who work in Israel. About 1.3 Palestinians live in impoverished Gaza among 8,500 Jewish settlers.
Wolfensohn also said the teams would examine the possibility of moving greenhouses and foundries in a key industrial zone to the Palestinian Authority and would also look into building a seaport in Gaza, as well as various business projects, to boost their economy.
Foreign investors wanted
Peres said direct dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians was vital to fulfilling the economic potential in the process of the withdrawal, and that it was important to involve foreign investors in it, as well as improving the methods of transportation of goods in Gaza.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Israel could also coordinate its Gaza pullout plan with the Palestinian Authority if Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas reigns in terrorists and carries out reforms within his government and security forces, which is also a key demand by the United States.
The Palestinian leader has already reshuffled and consolidated several of his security organizations. He also arrested two Hamas gunmen this week, but freed them after hundreds of loyalists of the terrorist group stormed the streets of Gaza City on Tuesday, setting up roadblocks and threatening to kill Abbas’s supporters.
